Issues with owners inspire Warriors, Clippers

Updated 11:09 pm, Friday, May 2, 2014

Los Angeles --

Man, you talk about your unlikely cheerleaders. As the Warriors and Clippers steam into Saturday night's Game 7 of their first-round playoff series, guess who are the two leading candidates for Most Inspirational?

Each owner has, in his own peculiar way, given his team a spiritual supercharge, imbuing his players with the belief that they are special and have something big to prove.

Thanks to Sterling, the Clippers are America's Orphans. Thanks to Lacob, the Warriors are on a mission to win one for Coach Kumbaya.

Understand, I'm not saying Sterling and Lacob are on the same level, either as human beings or as organizational heads.

Sterling is a hateful boob with a decades-long track record for wretched ownership. The Clippers became good by accident. Lacob seems like a decent fellow, has no resume of hate, by word or deed, and is batting .974 as an owner. Among Lacob's achievements is that he made one of the great new-head-coach finds in recent years when he hired Mark Jackson.

They're worlds apart, Sterling and Lacob, but inspiration is inspiration.

Sterling's stupendous pratfall, with an assist from point-bimbo V. Stiviano, has made the Clippers everyone's beloved rescue dogs. The Clippers, because they survived cruel captivity, are riding a wave of love from sports fans, and from millions who couldn't pick a basketball out of a lineup of round objects.

Clippers head coach Doc Rivers certainly didn't ask for this morale boost, but his open appraisal of the toll the controversy has taken on his team has had the effect of eliciting sympathy.

That triggered Jackson's defensive instincts. Jackson has taken pains to insist that the controversy has taken a big emotional toll on the Warriors, too. Number of people outside of Warriors World buying Jackson's pitch: Zero. Still, he's trying.

Likewise, Jackson didn't intend to become the rallying force for his team. But finding himself on the hot seat, with one of Lacob's shoes figuratively poised to shove his butt out the door, Jackson is making sure everyone knows that his is a team that is wildly overachieving because of a deep unity instilled by ... guess who.

After the Warriors' one-point win in Game 6 on Thursday night, Jackson spoke in reference to reports of dysfunction and discord between him and team ownership/management.

Jackson pointed with pride to how far his team has come in spite of what he called "all the sideline music." He wasn't referring only to the Sterling scandal.

Of his emotional leadership style and his team's unity, Jackson said, "Some folks don't like it. Some folks don't like it, and that's fine. But the way that this team conducts itself, in spite of everything that we've gone through, all the lies, all the adversity, all the sources, I could not be prouder, because what we are doing collectively speaks against (the critics). Somebody's lying."

Whoo! And that someone could be, I don't know, the man who owns the team?

Who's the bad guy here, Jackson or Lacob? We'll have all offseason to sort out that one. The intrigue goes deep, with more layers than a Hollywood makeup job.

Jackson's not likely to discuss it, but how do you think he feels that two of his assistant coaches, hired for him without his endorsement, went rogue on him, including Darren Erman, who secretly recorded private meetings? After Erman got fired, he was hired by the Celtics, a team Lacob once owned a piece of. How does that look?

And Lacob is no doubt thinking, "I hire Jackson, I hire a new GM, our team becomes the success story of the NBA, I plan a new arena, and suddenly I'm some kind of mafia bad guy?"

It might be unfair to Lacob, but at the end of the day - to use Jackson's favorite setup phrase - the Warriors have circled the wagons ferociously around their coach. They've done everything but get Jackson's mug tattooed over their hearts.

On the Clippers' side, the soap opera, unbelievably, is less intense, especially now that Sterling has been evicted from the penthouse of his mind. Rivers, though, is subtly letting his guys know they are the victims, a status they must fight to rise above.

I'm not accusing Rivers of exploitation. He's one of the truly decent people in sports. He's trying to nurse his team back to spiritual health, doing what he can.

Rivers gave his team two recent days off from "mandatory" media sessions, once by paying a league fine for blowing off the session, and once by fibbing and saying his team would not meet with the media because it had a day off, even though the Clips practiced.

It's unlikely Chris Paul's hamstring healing will be speeded along by Doc helping him avoid five minutes of cliched Q-and-A with the media. Rivers really thought his troops needed the breathing room. Besides, if you're an old Celtic, brought up in the Red Auerbach legacy of gamesmanship, you do what you can.

Game 7 awaits. The Golden Pom-Pom, for most inspirational cheerleader, is up for grabs.